What the commentators said

Britain deserves credit not just for a diplomatic triumph, but for the forensic skills of its scientists and intelligence services, said Shashank Joshi on Capx. Before the Brussels summit, only France and Germany were convinced Russia should be publicly blamed for the Salisbury attack. But a British briefing on the details, reportedly including much material from investigators “not in the public domain”, won over the sceptics. Indeed, the attack has backfired badly for the Kremlin, said Janet Daley in The Sunday Telegraph. Putin’s goal was to sow “dissension and division” in the West: he has achieved the opposite. The “thunderously unanimous” response of Europe’s leaders has made clear to all that our historic loyalties and “shared commitment to the rule of law” trump any short-term differences. We should be thanking Putin for drawing us together.

He has even provoked Donald Trump to take action against him, said The New York Times – a long overdue move. Trump’s constant refusal to criticise Putin (he even congratulated him for his election win) had raised suspicions “that Moscow knows secrets it could use to blackmail the American president”. Yet Trump is still holding back: instead of delivering the expulsion orders in a forthright speech of his own, he let them be announced in a White House statement. But what are these expulsions meant to achieve, asked Emily Tamkin in Foreign Policy. One thing they will do is escalate matters. As Russian foreign minster Sergey Lavrov put it last week: “Certainly, we will not tolerate such impudence”. He will now expel no fewer than 60 US diplomats. The result? “Both sides will have fewer diplomats to lower tensions.” But the ugly truth that this stand-off has forced us to confront, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph, is that we are already engaged in a conflict with Moscow – one in which Moscow’s aim is to destabilise its adversaries without resorting to “guns or tanks”. In effect, it blurs the line between “war and peace”. Putin is geared up for such a conflict. “The question is: are we?”